This month, finding your own space on the web, exploring the magic and quirks and possibilities of CSS, and (re)discovering community. | Continue reading
The comedy web series was one of the more interesting and influential adaptions of the web medium. It reversed the principles of traditional entertainment to create videos that were more approachable. | Continue reading
From a browser engine that started as the lesser known option used in an obscure browser to one that would take hold over the entire browser market. | Continue reading
A month that has us all looking towards the future. But as we forge that future, we also need to look towards the past | Continue reading
The webmaster was once a coveted and important role on the web. One day, it disappeared. This is what happened. | Continue reading
A bunch of retro experiments hit the web this month, which is a perfect time to look back at all the different moments that define it, and where it's going now. | Continue reading
Let’s start with something I learned doing research for my last post: Pandora deferred the salaries of its employees for over two years in the early 2000’s after it ran out of funding. This is not something I ever heard before, even in passing. I mentioned it briefly in my post, … | Continue reading
Internet Radio has been attempted so many times in the history of the web that it's hard to keep track. With each time came a new innovation, and in most cases, a new way to fail. | Continue reading
Our latest crisis has produced a different kind of web, and for many of us, a different attitude towards our online lives. | Continue reading
There’s a phrase that’s used often in the tech industry: eating your own dog food, sometimes used in an uglier, shortened form, dogfooding. It means that if you work on a product or a website, you should also be using said product or website to get a feel for how it’s working and … | Continue reading
The Spot was a webisodic soap opera that was as well-crafted as it was packed with drama. It boomed on the web for several years, and then faded away with virtually no trace. Until now. | Continue reading
March has been a weird month, but the web trudges onward. | Continue reading
Today is Super Tuesday and we are fully in the thick of campaign season, much of which is unfolding online. It’s so inundated, so a part of our daily lives, that campaigning on and with the web feels like it was always part of the process. But it wasn’t. Decades before the presid … | Continue reading
This month is all about blog posts, from pesonal experiences with the web to the long-term effects of social media. | Continue reading
If I asked you to guess, what do you think the first newspaper with a website was? I bet you’re thinking something like The New York Times or the Washington Post, right? Or maybe you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, so you happen know that The Wall Street Journal ha … | Continue reading
A history of Perl, Python, and the websites that rely on them. | Continue reading
Quick personal note. Now seems like as good a time as any to try out a few new things on this blog / newsletter / timeline. So in no paritcular order, here’s a quick of laundry list of stuff I’ll be trying. Let’s see how I do. I want to tweet more. In the coming … | Continue reading
In January of 1991, Tim Berners-Lee demoed the web for a small audience at a physics workshop in France. That might sound like a strange venue for the web, but his presence there was spectacularly unremarkable. The web, after all, had been developed at CERN, a research institute … | Continue reading
The Webby’s are an award show, (in)famously billed as “The Oscars of the Internet.” They’ve been running since 1996 which, as regular readers will know, was pretty much right when the web got up and running. The thing about the Webbys is if you trace it back, you’ll find your han … | Continue reading
This decade was not great for the web… There’s more than a few decade retrospective think-pieces making the rounds right now, but here’s a real kicker from Clio Chang, The Decade the Internet Lost Its Joy. Chang’s essential argument is that over the last ten years the web has got … | Continue reading
This decade was not great for the web… There’s more than a few decade retrospective think-pieces making the rounds right now, but here’s a real kicker from Clio Chang, The Decade the Internet Lost Its Joy. Chang’s essential argument is that over the last ten years the web has got … | Continue reading
This post starts with a book. This book: It’s called Jargon: An Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms. That’s my copy. It’s a book I stumbled on while researching this topic, and one I’ve come to truly love for a variety of reasons, not the least of which because it’s written by … | Continue reading
This post starts with a book. This book: It’s called Jargon: An Informal Dictionary of Computer Terms. That’s my copy. It’s a book I stumbled on while researching this topic, and one I’ve come to truly love for a variety of reasons, not the least of which because it’s written by … | Continue reading
Join me at Flashback Conference, February 10-11 in Orlando In February, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida giving a talk at Flashback Conference, a conference focused on the development of the web, and how its past has informed its present. It’s the first of its kind, which is going to … | Continue reading
Join me at Flashback Conference, February 10-11 in Orlando In February, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida giving a talk at Flashback Conference, a conference focused on the development of the web, and how its past has informed its present. It’s the first of its kind, which is going to … | Continue reading
You are reading this somewhere. On your laptop or on your phone or in your email or RSS reader. If you’re reading this on the web, then this page was delivered from my server to you via a protocol called HTTP. There’s all sorts of fascinating things I can say about HTTP, but the … | Continue reading
You are reading this somewhere. On your laptop or on your phone or in your email or RSS reader. If you’re reading this on the web, then this page was delivered from my server to you via a protocol called HTTP. There’s all sorts of fascinating things I can say about HTTP, but the … | Continue reading
Web communities started small, and many began with purpose. They radiated out from a single source, spread through close-knit circles and pre-viral word of mouth. We may have large social network behemoths that loom over the landscape and dominate the market these days, but they … | Continue reading
Web communities started small, and many began with purpose. They radiated out from a single source, spread through close-knit circles and pre-viral word of mouth. We may have large social network behemoths that loom over the landscape and dominate the market these days, but they … | Continue reading
A Great Reckoning I missed this last month, but if you read one thing from this months weblog, I ask that it be Facing the Great Reckoning Head-On by danah boyd, a researcher and technology analyst that’s made an enormous impact on the tech industry over the years. Last month, sh … | Continue reading
A Great Reckoning I missed this last month, but if you read one thing from this months weblog, I ask that it be Facing the Great Reckoning Head-On by danah boyd, a researcher and technology analyst that’s made an enormous impact on the tech industry over the years. Last month, sh … | Continue reading
In 1995, Netscape Navigator was enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of the browser market. They had only released the first version of their browser a year prior, but already it was a crowd favorite and was bolstering the growing popularity of the web. But employees at Netscape w … | Continue reading
In 1995, Netscape Navigator was enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of the browser market. They had only released the first version of their browser a year prior, but already it was a crowd favorite and was bolstering the growing popularity of the web. But employees at Netscape w … | Continue reading
The Darker Side of Blogging We web folk tend to look at the olden days of blogging as a simpler time when people on the web would gather for discussions and collaborative experiments. In our tinge of nostalgia, it can be hard to pull down those rose colored glasses. I find myself … | Continue reading
The Darker Side of Blogging We web folk tend to look at the olden days of blogging as a simpler time when people on the web would gather for discussions and collaborative experiments. In our tinge of nostalgia, it can be hard to pull down those rose colored glasses. I find myself … | Continue reading
Computer programmers like to squabble. I suppose this is true in any profession, but it is most certainly true for programmers. Don’t believe me? Just ask a programmer if you should set up your web services using SOAP or REST. Then grab a cup of coffee, because it’s going to be a … | Continue reading
In an interview for her book Internet Art in 2004, writer Rachel Greene had this to say about why she felt the subject of her book was so important: I refuse to let commercial interests dominate the history and perception of the net because I think they would exclude the most imp … | Continue reading
In an interview for her book Internet Art in 2004, writer Rachel Greene had this to say about why she felt the subject of her book was so important: I refuse to let commercial interests dominate the history and perception of the net because I think they would exclude the most imp … | Continue reading
In Chapter 2 of what I’m calling my complete history, I traced one of the most massive shifts in the history of the web to 1995, a transformative year, it turns out, not just for technology but for the United States generally. A year that, incidentally, also included the trial of … | Continue reading
In Chapter 2 of what I’m calling my complete history, I traced one of the most massive shifts in the history of the web to 1995, a transformative year, it turns out, not just for technology but for the United States generally. A year that, incidentally, also included the trial of … | Continue reading
I talked a bit about the importance of the WWW Wizards Workshop last time in my recap on the importance of 1995, but there was another essential element of that meeting I glossed over a bit. In July of 1993, a few dozen developers huddled together at the O’Reilly offices in Cambr … | Continue reading
I talked a bit about the importance of the WWW Wizards Workshop last time in my recap on the importance of 1995, but there was another essential element of that meeting I glossed over a bit. In July of 1993, a few dozen developers huddled together at the O’Reilly offices in Cambr … | Continue reading
IPO’s Old and New Slack had its so-called “non-IPO” this month, which seems to have gone pretty well and came with its own bells and whistles and fanfare. It got me thinking back to other major tech IPO’s, the single largest still being Netscape, which kind of started this whole … | Continue reading
IPO’s Old and New Slack had its so-called “non-IPO” this month, which seems to have gone pretty well and came with its own bells and whistles and fanfare. It got me thinking back to other major tech IPO’s, the single largest still being Netscape, which kind of started this whole … | Continue reading
This post was originally published on CSS-Tricks. On March 6, 2018, a new bug was added to the official Mozilla Firefox browser bug tracker. A developer had noticed an issue with Mozilla’s nightly build. The report noted that a 14-day weather forecast widget typically featured on … | Continue reading
This post was originally published on CSS-Tricks. On March 6, 2018, a new bug was added to the official Mozilla Firefox browser bug tracker. A developer had noticed an issue with Mozilla’s nightly build. The report noted that a 14-day weather forecast widget typically featured on … | Continue reading
The web’s history is always being written, and not just by me. So each month I like to go through and share bits of research and great posts that continue to explore the heart and history of the web. It’s my sites own personal weblog. Ask Me Anything If you’ve never been to Cake, … | Continue reading
The web’s history is always being written, and not just by me. So each month I like to go through and share bits of research and great posts that continue to explore the heart and history of the web. It’s my sites own personal weblog. Ask Me Anything If you’ve never been to Cake, … | Continue reading